 Give the people what they want. Give the people what they want. Give the people what they want. Your weekly movement news round up. Well, welcome to Give the People What They Want, which comes to you from People's Dispatch. That's Zoe and Prashant. I'm Vijay from Globetrotter. Really happy to be with you. This is our last show for 2022. My God, I can't believe I've lived till 2022. We're starting in 2023 next. So join us then as well. Looking forward to talking about some of the big stories of the year. The biggest story, perhaps Prashant, quite an unreported story, is the new cabinet in Israel. Not being discussed much, I must say, but there was a story that was done or a column rather by Thomas Friedman of the New York Times, who, looking at the new cabinet or the new government of Benjamin Netanyahu, wrote, what in the world is happening in Israel? If you ask me, he continued, the most likely outcome of the present situation is a total mess that will leave Israel no longer being a bedrock of stability. We're going to get back to this whole idea of the bedrock of stability, but let's take a little bit of a look at this cabinet. Itamar Ben Gavir, who's been the focus of a lot of attention here, he belongs to the Jewish power party, interestingly named party, hardcore annexationists, they are maximalists. They believe that there should be no Palestinians anywhere between the Jordan River and the Mediterranean Sea. These people are quite extraordinary in their harsh rhetoric. In fact, Mr. Ben Gavir until recently had a picture in his house of Baruch Goldstein, who had murdered 29 Palestinians in Hebron in 1994. Imagine the kind of person who called for the assassination of Isaac Rabin before it happened. That's Mr. Ben Gavir. That's one person of great concern. We're going to get back to the situation in Palestine over this last year, of course, but one more person that I wanted to mention, not really been talked about much, and that's Avi Mazov. Mr. Avi Mazov is from a small party, an anti-LGBTQ party. Now he is going to be in charge of the education ministry. Imagine this. One of the things that Israel for years used to brag about was it would say, well, we have the greatest democracy and so on, liberal country, people who are, in a sense, sexual minorities are free to be sexual minorities in Israel, not any longer, not under the watch of this new cabinet. Pretty stunning how limited has been the outrage from around the world that you now have these annexationists who are violators of international law in charge of affairs in Tel Aviv. It's been a tough year for Palestinians, Prashant. Tell us a little bit, looking back at what has been the story in Palestine. Right. I mean, Thomas Friedman's outrage is a bit out there, so to speak, because I think for observers of Israeli politics, we've been observing Israeli politics for quite some time. We talked about this on the show. We've been observing Palestinian resistance as well. This government has not come as a surprise in any way. It was a natural outcome of how Israeli politics has been moving for many, many years. It is a natural outcome of the kind of cynical, and on the one hand cynical, of course, but on the other hand, also extremely violent and extremist politics that people like Benjamin Netanyahu perfected over the years. Right now, people in the US, people in the West are kind of outraging because this set of people shows Israel in a bad light to their own domestic constancies, when you have, say, an anti-LGBTQ politician or someone like Ben Guir who's so explicitly, who's so outwardly racist and violent. It portrays the whole community. Maybe it portrays Israel in a very bad light, and thus you have the liberal American voices being all very unhappy about this, but this is what has been happening on the ground all this while. When we went to Sheikh Jarrah, took out a pistol, talked about settlements, I mean, irrespective of whether Ben Guir was heading it or not, this was what was happening. Settlers barging into Al-Aqsa Mosque, nothing new about this for many years, it's been going on. The attacks on Gaza, for instance, the bombardment, you didn't need Ben Guir to be in government for Netanyahu to bombard it and more equally importantly, this year for most of the year, I mean, until the very end of the year, Netanyahu was not in power. The so-called moderates were in power, but despite that, the fact remains that this has been the most violent year for Palestinians as far as the United Nations is concerned. They have been continuously raising some of these issues. I think the number of people who were killed in the West Bank and occupied Jerusalem is around 170 people. And if you look at that, I believe about 30 of them are children. 9,000 people, I believe, have been injured. And the news, if you follow some of the news that comes out of Wafa and the sources, the number of raids that took place, it was almost a daily occurrence. Like after a point, the names kind of start the day that nature, the reports, the raids almost melt into each other because every day you have Israel releasing exactly the same kind of statements. Oh, we were after some terrorists, we went there and then it turns out maybe it's a 16-year-old girl who's killed or a young boy who's shot or whatever. And the fact is that all this is basically baked into how the Israeli state functions at this point. So the outrage over these right wing for extreme right wing people coming to power is in some ways very misplaced. But like I said, a horrible year in the sense that we, of course, do remember Shireen Abu Akhla, a journalist who was shot dead in May, another classic example of how the Israeli state has been functioning with the assistance of the United States. Multiple denials are the fact that she was shot dead by an Israeli soldier although the evidence was clear on the ground. There were even attempts to sort of shift the blame onto the Palestinians until human rights organizations prove with forensic evidence that the soldier, the sniper was responsible. After all this evidence then they said, oh maybe it was us, but there's no criminal investigation. And I think in a nutshell that kind of symbolizes what this means. There was of course another attack on Gaza. It did not escalate into a full-fledged war like in 2021. But nonetheless cause in 21 and 22 you have similar attacks. It kind of shows the continuity of policy that all both these governments in Israel had. So of course in terms of I think attacks by settlers also this has been a year of increasing attacks on settlers. In fact some of the policies Ben Guir and Netanyahu plan to actually legalize the outposts as well. Which even by Israeli law were considered illegal until recently. So even that these outposts which are considered illegal are said to be legalized under this new government. So definitely a very difficult time for Palestinians. Their protests have continued. The resistance have continued. Activists on the ground, activists abroad. Organizations which were banned in the previous year continuing their work despite all this stress. People like Salah Amouri for instance who was recently deported because he was involved in the activity. He was involved in exposing many of these crimes. Shatah Odeh who spent many many months in jail. The health right activists before she was released. And that too on very strict conditions regarding her participation in public work. So I mean it's very clear this is apartheid and I think increasingly that word is being used. Organizations now more open to calling it apartheid. We saw that the nakba will be commemorated next year you know officially internationally. But so on the one hand there is increasing repression but I think on the other hand there is increasing awareness also of the fact that you know this is this is this is racism. This is apartheid. This is pure criminal behavior on international terms. It's very strange that our words are being turned against us in so many ways you know words like peace begin to be completely flattened. This year for instance the Nobel Peace Prize was shared between three different organizations. A Russian organization which has been expelled from Russia a Belarusian human rights dissident and the Ukrainian Center for Civil Liberties. Half of that organization Alexandra Mitvichuk went to Norway to receive the Nobel Peace Prize. Now what was interesting is there are two things really. One is each of these organizations have been funded by the National Endowment for Democracy set up by the US Congress in the 1980s. In fact the Ukrainian Center for Civil Liberties before it received the Nobel Peace Prize received the prize from the National Endowment for Democracy. What's striking and this is the second thing about the Peace Prize this year is Alexandra Mitvichuk went to Oslo and in her speech effectively directly called for the Norwegian Government to arm Ukraine so that it could continue its war. This is Orwellian war is peace no mention in that speech for the need to have a kind of negotiated settlement in Ukraine. We are now almost a year into that war into that conflict the Nobel Peace Prize which is given by Norwegian Parliamentarians five of them selected each year one would have thought that would have been a good occasion to call for a negotiation to call for the end to the conflict no that was precisely the place where they called for an acceleration of the war. War is peace coups are democracy hard to pay attention to what's happening to the world if the language is entirely barbarized Zoe you reported recently and very well I must say from Peru on that coup which is not called a coup what's been happening in Latin America in this last year particularly in Peru it's definitely been a whirlwind in Latin American the Caribbean I'd say a lot of as you often say Vijay the sigs and zags of history there's been tremendous advances in many respects steps taken forward for example we can look at the passing of the family code in Cuba the victory of Gustavo Petro in Colombia the victory of Lula da Silva these are enormous steps forward as you know as we know is under the boot of US imperialism but there are also as often there are the tremendous setbacks and so as we were covering over the past couple of weeks with the coup in Peru the undermining of democratic order there by the right-wing congress by corporate media led by Dina Bodoerte who was the vice president of the government in Brazil now she is entering her third week as de facto president and shows no signs of stepping down people are in a temporary truce in terms of mobilizations against the coup but there has been a national strike announced for January 4th and over the past week there's been damning investigations that have been published for example from the city of Ayacucha which I visited and spoke to family members from the city there was a 51 year old man who was shot and killed while trying to assist someone who had been shot down and I think this is such an emblematic scene that occurred that first of all the army is opening fire on protestors something we see often in Palestine and then shooting down a 51 year old man who's coming to the aid of someone who's been shot I think this is a scene that we saw in Peru but we've seen it across the world and so it's so harrowing and this video was republished by Reuters and so now there actually is significant pressure on the government in terms of their human rights abuses there's been numerous investigations by international bodies the Inter-American Human Rights Commission et cetera so we'll see how this continues going into the new year really the coup government has kind of dug its heels into the ground and we do have full support of the media of the judiciary of a lot of middle class Peruvian society which was quite uncomfortable with the Pedro Casio government so I think the resistance of the people in Peru is going to continue as I said there's a national strike plan for January 4th they're continuing to raise the demand for justice for the victims of the 28 victims fatal victims of the violence of the police but this will continue to be a struggle and it's complicated because it's not necessarily the cause of people across the world there has been very strong statements by Gustavo Petro by Andrés Manuel Lopez Obrador of Mexico but this is not becoming the rallying cry for defending sovereignty in Latin America so it is a complicated what happens when you get to those zigs and zags, you're listening to give the people what they want come to you from People's Dispatch lots of good stories at the website peoplespatch.org I'm Vijay from Globetrotter happy to be with you but Zoe this has been a year as we say you mentioned the zigs and the zags an important year because it was a major political struggle in Latin America's on the 1st of January, Mr. Lula will be inaugurated as the president. Mr. Bolsonaro seems to have bought in a commercial flight from Brasilia bound for Orlando, he's then going to get on to another flight I believe to go to Miami, which is a sort of Brazil in exile. Some people think he's left Brazil for good. What's the story with Brazil? What a year for Brazil, just to start with, and then what could one anticipate with this new government starting in January? Well, I think it's funny, any time a progressive wins elections in Latin America, almost immediately there's a flight booked for Miami. We saw this in Honduras, we've seen this across Latin America, so it's quite a fun trend that they have going there, escaping justice, especially in the case of Bolivia, where they really actually escaped through Brazil to get to Miami in order to escape the justice system. But Brazil, I mean tremendous year. At the beginning of the pandemic, you have Bolsonaro in power who's calling COVID a small cold, who's denying any sort of protection measures for the population, denying the possibility of approving vaccines. A truly horrific situation, obviously today the death toll of over 700,000 people dead from the pandemic is a result of this government. And in October, you have one of the most impactful victories of the left and progressive forces, which is of course the victory of Lula Silva. Vijay, you and I were both there, Prashanta as well, seeing how so many diverse sectors of Brazilian society really came together rallying behind this candidacy. We're not only talking about the left parties coming together overcoming their differences, but really, I mean large sections of even the ruling class, bankers, many people who saw that a government under Bolsonaro is not actually good for business. It's not good for foreign investors. It's not good for their national industry. And at the end of the day, they need someone who's going to maintain a bit of stability. But more importantly, of course, the people's movements who really took on this campaign were on the streets talking to people, organizing popular committees, really getting the vote out, making sure that the 10 years of anti-PT, anti-workers party rhetoric, which was so widespread in the media by the in the law fair cases was able to be overcome that people were able to understand that, for example, the all of the convictions against Lula were politically motivated and as such were annulled. But this is a big challenge to be able to explain to society why this person was in prison for over 580 days. But in the end, Lula was victorious in the second round of these elections. Since then, it has been a bit of a rocky road in the sense that right wing forces have been mobilized under Bolsonaro. They have been empowered. They have been given a push to actually realize that they have street capacity to mobilize to make demands. They remain permanently camped outside the barracks of the military in Brasilia. They've made numerous mobilizations across the country. There were the road blockades following the election of Lula da Silva saying that it was fraud committed. They continue to demand that the armed forces intervene. Just this week, a man was arrested in Brasilia who had a military arsenal in his hotel room who was planning to attack the inauguration and create chaos and forced the armed forces to intervene so that Lula wouldn't be sworn in as president. So it might amid this enormous and tremendous victory of Lula da Silva of bringing back this this vision of Brazil for the people of zero hunger of zero poverty. There's also this creeping and ever growing stronger right wing force that realizes that it can actually do damage. It can actually take the streaks that already took out Lula da Silva from power. It almost won these elections the second round. We have to remember that the margin was quite close in these in these elections, unfortunately. And now they want to make trouble on the day of the inauguration. I don't think this will happen. They have very strong security, but it will be something that will be a permanent force during the government of Lula. Well, Lula has said, of course, that given that the Bolsonaroistas are very strong in the chamber of deputies in the Senate, Lula will be spending a lot of his time on international topics. He'll be on the move trying to solve the conflict in Ukraine. And I'm sure he's going to be on the African continent where he spent a lot of time when he was previously the president. Prashant, that African continent right now, another coup attempt in Gambia put down, coup attempt in Principe put down. There are now federal police in the capital Intigre in Ethiopia. Ziggs and Zags on the African continent for sure just come off this Africa US summit. Good reporting at the People's Dispatch site or two part article on the Democratic Republic of the Congo. Lots of things to talk about Prashant. I don't even know where to begin to ask you. It's a tough question because, of course, a diverse continent, but also so many processes taking place there, some of which contradictory, some of which are curious, but all of which are deserved to be talked about extensively. I mean, you mentioned the DRC where there's been a decades of conflict and this latest round of fighting by this rebel group called M23 is just the latest. Our reporter, Thanapriya Singh spoke to Kambali Musauli and active is there for this two part report where he very extensively chronicles the impact of these decades of fighting the millions of people who have been killed. And the fact that ultimately behind this so called rebel group is it's pretty clear that it's Rwanda, which is really arming and promoting this group in Rwanda. Of course, a key ally both of the United States and the United Kingdom. And if you look, for instance, at how Rwanda and Uganda over the decades looted the resources of the Congo, how many of these resources find their way to the international market and benefit both these countries. It's quite unbelievable in terms of how the DRC, which is one of the most important countries in Africa, has been consistently looted and attacked for decades in order to ensure that these resources which are essential for what is often called the fourth industrial revolution, a lot of the tech we see around this are easily available in the market. And of course, like I said, a lot of the reporting just focuses on the here and now. There's a rebel group and the army and the rebel group of fighting is really where it ends. Whereas, what about the invasion of 96, the invasion of 98, the history of this rebel group where it morphed itself, all of this really kind of doesn't go much notice. But then on the other hand, again, and I think an area we've talked about a lot is West Africa, where this year, for instance, saw two coups, you mentioned coups, saw two coups in Burkina Faso, and it saw the French forces being basically kicked out of Mali and now French NGOs as well. And I was there recently and what you sort of sense was the fact that there is this groundswell of support of anger against what the French have been doing in this region, which is, you know, say that we're fighting terrorism and then deploy forces all over and that has not really solved any of the issues around violence at all. So while these coups took place in countries like Mali and Burkina Faso or Guinea for that matter, what seems to be behind that is this mass upsurge of support, which is really, really an interesting trend to sort of track. And you know, something we need to be keep watching, looking at in the coming year as well, because definitely these are not subsiding, these waves are not subsiding. And the military rulers who came to power in these schools are going to have a tough time if they do not actually meet the aspirations of the people, because right now they did come to power riding this dissatisfaction, but they have a lot more to answer. Interesting also that people's movements across the region also working together. We reported on the inauguration of what is called the West African People's Organization, trade unions, people's movements, farmers movements all coming together to sort of set a new agenda, very interesting moment right there. And of course, like we said, the last another key aspect, which is Ethiopia, where the war finally seems to have come to an end after the US definitely tried its best to ensure that the Ethiopian civil war would continue, that the Tigray People's Liberation Front would keep having momentum, but they were just defeated. And right now, there is a peace deal. Now, the Horn of Africa is really one of the most important regions because of its strategic importance, the access to the Red Sea, Somalia is already in a very bad state. If Ethiopia had also gone in a similar direction, the impact of this I think for decades would have affected the whole of the continent. So will this peace be able to sort of prevent such an outcome is a very important question. I think we sort of need to watch out for the next year as well. So all these together, I mean, these are just three instances, three hotspots of conflicts zone, so to speak, where it's still very much things have still very much in the flux. The people's perspective in all of these issues, I think is very clear in the sense that there are two, there's definitely the side of imperialism, there's a side of foreign intervention in various ways either directly in military ways or the diplomatic ways. And it is clear that each zone of intervention, it just leads to further violence, just leads to further destruction of resources. On the other hand, is the possibility that countries of the region can actually try to work together, try to resolve some of their disputes. So will the space be given for that? I mean, nobody's saying that who leaders are your best source at the best prospect or whatever, but will there even be the space for countries to work out their issues without intervention from abroad is really, I think the challenges that each of these issues, each of these spots actually displaced in its own way. So definitely going to be a very important year for Africa because of course China has been playing a huge role. The US, like you said, with this African summit trying to somehow emerge as some sort of a savior, but I don't think many countries are buying it. So very, very important year ahead for Africa. So important year and yet Africa, many countries including Zambia, rich Zambia, rich with copper and other minerals and metals back to the IMF, back to Washington DC, asking for money. World Bank actually had a pretty interesting report this year showing that 60% of developing countries are in serious debt distress. And the World Bank pointed out that we're going to see a wave of defaults for many of these countries in the period ahead. It's interesting, this issue of the default and the debt crisis. In fact, if you look at the numbers, if you look at the graphs, even in the World Bank report, you can find that the debt crisis has been with many of these countries since the 1980s. This is not like a new phenomena. There were some prospects for reducing debt in the 1990s when there was a kind of ballooning of stock markets in many parts of the world, including in developing countries. But you see this long-term debt crisis, no answer to it at all, debt crisis, which has been used to cut infrastructure, construction of infrastructure. Look, this year we saw terrible, terrible floods in Pakistan. Now it's very clear that these floods were a consequence of the global warming, the climate catastrophe that we're all living through. And again, at COP in Egypt, there was absolute pabulum. There was no real agenda put forward that the developed countries dominated the discussion at COP 27 in Egypt, in Sharmal Sheikh. But we saw in Pakistan, there were these terrible floods. Of course, it has to do with the climate catastrophe. But it also has to do with the fact that Pakistan's government, for many reasons, is simply not invested in key infrastructure, including upgrading dams, upgrading canals, rebuilding the high roads and so on. None of that has been able to be done. We're seeing the IMF actually play a role here because the IMF enforced the kind of cutting on these countries. And we're seeing it now in Sri Lanka. Sri Lanka has been through cycles of IMF agreements. And now the government of Ranil Vikrama Singh is doing everything possible to make sure that in the first semester of 2023, the International Monetary Fund will sign off on a 2.9 billion US dollar loan. Now, what they're doing in anticipation of that, I think is quite shocking. And we are going to watch this carefully. One of the things that the government of Mr. Vikrama Singh has said is that Sri Lanka is going to cut its military forces by perhaps up to 16,000 people already. Now, pay attention to this. There is mass unemployment in Sri Lanka. Numbers show that about almost 300,000 people or so have left the country looking for work elsewhere. Now you're going to have 16,000 people who understand weaponry and are very much trained in fighting an insurgency. You're going to release them into permanent unemployment. I mean, it doesn't look to me like a very good policy approach by the Sri Lankan government. It doesn't even look from the reports coming out of Colombo. It doesn't even look that as if there's going to be a sufficient umbrella for these people who are going to be cashiered. It's one thing to cashier people who don't know how to use guns. It's another thing to cashier people who know how to use guns. We're going to watch this carefully. Sri Lanka goes back to the IMF in the early part of next year, not sure what's going to happen. Big stories this year. People's dispatches try its best to cover all of them. I must say that the reason why it's been hard to shove all this into a half an hour show is we have so many stories to share with you from Africa, from Asia, from Latin America, and also if we have time from those other parts of the world that we often just neglect. In other words, the Atlantic countries. Our focus is on Africa, Asia, Latin America. Come and support people's dispatch. Come and support Globetrotter. We really like working for you. Happy New Year. See you next year. Give the people what they want. Our last show, 2022, it's over. Smash. Pen drop. The journalist mic drop.